1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a component electronic catalog which enables easy selection of electronic components fit to the kinds of needs through a search operation and with the use of a display screen, as well as formation of mounting data for a mounting apparatus to automatically mount the selected electronic components without manual inputs of data related to the to-be-mounted components, mainly when the electronic components are mounted on electronic circuit boards by the mounting apparatus to form the boards.
2. State of the Art
There are many kinds of electronic components to be mounted to boards to produce various types of electronic circuit boards, some of which are replaceable with other kinds of components. The total number of kinds of electronic components is furthermore increased if compatible components among different manufacturers are included. In forming an electronic circuit board by mounting electronic components of various kinds to a board, it is necessary to select electronic components that meet various kinds of needs set in the design stage of the electronic circuit. In mounting the various kinds of components on boards, it is also necessary to consider, so as to mount the components properly and surely, not being mutually influenced by characteristics and durabilities of the electronic components to be mounted and other electronic components. A growing requirement these days is to correctly recognize shapes of components and highly accurately mount the components, especially as the lead pitch is minimized in accordance with the increased density of components.
More specifically, the kind of nozzles and chucks for carrying the electronic components, the moving speed of a mounting head equipped with the nozzles and chucks, necessary fall positions of the nozzles and chucks when taking out the electronic components from a component feed section or mounting the components, that is, heightwise positions when the nozzles and chucks take out the electronic components or heightwise positions when the nozzles and chucks mount the electronic components to the board, the moving speed of the board, which has at least one electronic component mounted thereon, particularly acceleration of the board, and various kinds of allowances, etc. should be taken into consideration when the electronic components are mounted to the board.
These various kinds of electronic components are packed in tapes to be automatically supplied to the mounting apparatus or are contained in trays, or handled in the form of sticks or in bulk. The component supply manner, including an accommodation pitch or the like of components, i.e., the form of packing the components, should also be taken in mind when mounting data are to be formed.
Meanwhile, when the electronic components are mounted, whether or not the electronic components are properly selected or directed is recognized, so that improper components are exchanged or the direction of the components is corrected based on the recognition results. In order to achieve the above inspection, it is necessary to form inspection data, as the mounting data, on the basis of information related to the electronic components such as shapes, surface reflectivities, colors, hue, polarity marks, printed characters, and color codes marked on the components, etc.
Component catalog brochures have been used heretofore to form the above-described mounting data or inspection data so as to select electronic components of various kinds in conformity with the need from the viewpoint of the circuit design and to mount the selected electronic components properly. Detailed and complicated component information are edited and recorded for every kind of electronic component in the brochures according to a predetermined classification method. In some cases, electronic components have been actually measured with the use of calipers or the like to obtain necessary data.
It is difficult not only to actually measure the electronic components as above, but to search for the electronic components meeting a need from the catalog brochures. The success of the optimum selection of required components depends on how carefully the catalog brochures are reviewed in detail, which consumes a large quantity of labor and time. In particular, the recent diversification of needs increases the number of kinds of electronic components which are provided, enlarging the amount of information data, thus furthermore hindering the optimum selection of components.
For solving the problem, a so-called component electronic catalog has been provided, whereby data of electronic components in the catalog brochures are handled as image data to be displayed on a screen. The image data, edited and stored according to a predetermined classification method in the electronic catalog, are read out and displayed on the screen by a special read device, a personal computer or the like, in accordance with predetermined classification and search procedures. The electronic components can thus be rationally searched and selected in a short time while the display screen is changed through the search or look-up operation. The electronic catalog EC using a storage medium such as a CD-ROM holds the image data for displaying various data of various kinds of electronic components on the screen in an image data file IMF as shown in FIG. 23. The image data file IMF holds character data such as numerics and characters and figure data such as pictures, figures, etc. together in one set or in a suitably divided state.
The above-described component electronic catalog EC stores various kinds of data of shapes, dimensions, surface states, characteristics, and usage, etc. of the electronic components as the image data to be displayed on the screen in the form of photographs, drawings, tables, and graphs, and naturally includes data for forming the mounting data of the components as well.
A flow chart of FIG. 24 shows a conventionally practiced sequence to form the mounting data with the use of the electronic catalog EC. The sequence will be described below. First, the electronic catalog EC is loaded to a read device and the read device is started to read out the catalog on the screen.
Then, a command is input through manipulation of a search key and setting of conditions in accordance with predetermined classification and search procedures. A command analysis section subsequently starts searching. Commands are repeatedly input until one electronic component is selected.
FIG. 25 shows a display screen obtained by designating a rough classification group of transistors and then searching bipolar transistors (PN) . . . 2SA, 2SB in a detailed classification group. A cursor in the screen is located to point to the first component among 62 components concerned. A user can search for any component among the 62 components by moving the cursor to a column of the required component. As a result of this, one electronic component is selected to thereby detect image data of which component should be displayed on the screen. The image data of the detected component are displayed on the screen according to predetermined procedures by the user""s manipulation.
For example, supposing that the user designates a search of the component 2SA1022 on the screen of FIG. 25 and manipulates an explanation key, image data related to the rudimental description of the component 2SA1022 are displayed on the screen as shown in FIG. 26.
When a search (S) is selected on the screen of FIG. 26, a list of display items in the rough classification group selectable on the screen of FIG. 26 is window-displayed as in FIG. 27. If an outline view is selected on the screen of FIG. 27 or directly from the screen of FIG. 26, image data related to the outer shape of the component are shown on the screen as indicated in FIG. 28. If a land view is selected, image data related to the land are displayed on the screen as in FIG. 29. If a taping size is selected, image data related to the taping size appear on the screen as in FIG. 30. Meanwhile, if a reel size is selected, image data related to the reel size are shown on the screen as in FIG. 31.
FIG. 32 is a window display of image data related to a characteristic curve when the characteristic curve is selected on the initial explanation screen when an electronic component of a motor control circuit of AN6650 is subjected to search. FIG. 33 is a window display obtained when an example of an applied circuit is selected with priority on the initial explanation screen of FIG. 32, with a block diagram added.
The user can relatively easily select the electronic components fit to the needs from the viewpoint of the circuit design by searching the component data as described hereinabove and freely visually confirm various kinds of data of selected and to-be-mounted components necessary to form mounting data of the selected electronic components by the above search. At the same time, the user can freely search data corresponding to a component mounting method by chucks or suction nozzles, or depending on whether the components are recognized or not or how the components are recognized, etc.
In order to form the mounting data based on the data visually confirmed with the use of the electronic catalog as above, the visually confirmed mounting data of components have been conventionally manually input to a special automatic data processor or an automatic data processor such as a personal computer, combined with preliminarily formed data of mounting positions of the components or the like, to thereby data-process and obtain the component mounting data.
The above-described utilization of the conventional electronic catalog enables relatively easy selection of electronic components satisfying the needs due to a programmed rational search system, so that various sorts of data can be efficiently visually confirmed one by one. However, the recorded data are image data intended totally for screen display and therefore cannot be directly used to automatically form the mounting data for mounting the selected electronic components. As such, the user is obliged to take the trouble to manually input the visually confirmed data to the automatic data processor while sequentially selecting the required electronic components in the search operation. In other words, it still takes a considerable amount of labor and time to form the mounting data even with the help of the conventional electronic catalog.
The present invention is devised to solve the aforementioned inconvenience and has for its object to provide a component electronic catalog which not only works in the same manner as the conventional electronic catalog thereby achieving screen search of components, but realizes automatic reading of component text data and automatic formation of mounting data of the components selected through the screen search, etc. without manual inputting of component data.
In accomplishing these and other aspects, according to one aspect of the present invention, there is provided a component electronic catalog including a storage medium storing:
image data of various kinds of components; and
component text data necessary for mounting of the components which includes shapes and dimensions of the components in a manner to be read out.
According to a second aspect of the present invention, there is provided a component electronic catalog according to the first aspect, wherein the component text data includes packing forms and colors of the components.
According to a third aspect of the present invention, there is provided a component electronic catalog according to the first aspect, wherein the component text data comprises a component master file including data of names of the components; a component appearance file including data of the shapes and dimensions of the components; and a packaging file including data of package forms of the components.
According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a component electronic catalog according to the third aspect, wherein the component appearance file comprises: a component shape file including data of the shapes and dimensions of the components; a component special shape file including data of special features of the components; a component characteristic master file including data of names and packaged color codes of the components; and a component polarity file including names of the components and presence/absence of polarities of the components, and the packaging file comprises a packing form file including data of packing form codes and packing form kind codes of the components and a reel data file including data of names and packed counts of the components.
According to a fifth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a component electronic catalog according to the first aspect, wherein the storage medium is detachable from a reading device for reading out stored contents of the medium from the medium.
According to a sixth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a component electronic catalog according to the fifth aspect, wherein the data stored in the storage medium are transmitted to an other device or vice versa by communication.
According to a seventh aspect of the present invention, there is provided a storage medium for storing data for access by an application program being executed on a data processing system, comprising:
a data structure stored in the medium as component electronic catalog, the data structure including information resident in a text data file used by the application program and including:
image data of various kinds of components and;
component text data necessary for mounting of the components which includes shapes and dimensions of the components in a manner to be read out.
According to an eighth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a storage medium according to the seventh aspect, wherein the component text data includes packing forms and colors of the components.
According to a ninth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a storage medium according to the seventh aspect, wherein the component text data comprises a component master file including data of names of the components; a component appearance file including data of the shapes and dimensions of the components; and a packaging file including data of package forms of the components.
According to a tenth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a storage medium according to the ninth aspect, wherein the component appearance file comprises: a component shape file including data of the shapes and dimensions of the components; a component special shape file including data of special features of the components; a component characteristic master file including data of names and packaged color codes of the components; and a component polarity file including names of the components and presence/absence of polarities of the components, and the packaging file comprises a packing form file including data of packing form codes and packing form kind codes of the components and a reel data file including data of names and packed counts of the components.
In the above, the storage medium stores not only the image data of various kinds of components including components to be mounted, but component text data necessary for mounting of components, e.g., shapes, dimensions, packing forms, colors and the like of the components. Therefore, with the utilization of the above storage medium, the component electronic catalog works in the same manner as the conventional component electronic catalog, that is, the component electronic catalog can be used for the purpose of screen search. At the same time, the component electronic catalog can obtain component text data for every component to be mounted at the respective mounting position by automatically read the necessary information from the component text data stored therein, on the basis of to-be-mounted component information of preliminarily formed mounting position data of components to be mounted. Accordingly, mounting data for supplying and mounting the components to predetermined positions by conventional mounting apparatus for instance, an NC program related to mounting positions of components, a component library related to the recognition of components such as shapes, dimensions, colors, etc. of components, a supply library related to supplied states of components, e.g., arrangement at a component feed section, etc. can be automatically generated through automatic data processing in the same manner as in the conventional art with the use of the mounting position data and data including the component text data for every component to be mounted at each mounting position. Since manually input data of various kinds of components necessary for forming the mounting data of every component to be mounted is eliminated, the labor and time consumed for forming the mounting data are greatly reduced.